The present invention relates to a cutting tool.
The cutting tool of the present invention may be used for cutting sheet material including corrugated sheet material, particularly sheet metal and plastics sheeting. In the cutting operation, the cutting tool of the present invention removes a thin ribbon of swarf from the material being cut by the cutting action of its three blade members. Prior art three bladed cutting tools suffer from the drawback that the cutting operation produces an uncontrolled ribbon of swarf of large diameter which exits from the front of the cutting tool and back into the immediate path of the curing direction of the cutting tool and the hands of the operator holding the cutting tool. This slows down the cutting operation since time must be spent removing the unwanted swarf from the cutting tool's cutting path so that the cutting tool can be advanced and also to provide a safer area for the cutting tool to work in. Further, the uncontrolled ribbon of swarf is apt to re-enter the cutting zone between the cutting blades thereby fouling the cutting tools cutting ability. Additionally, prior art three bladed cutting tools do not address the problem of keeping the cutting angle between the cutting edges on the middle cutting blade and the outer cutting blades constant through the cutting operation. This results in the material to be cut slipping forwards on commencement of the cut and the cut is inefficiently performed at the end of a cut thereby slowing down the speed and continuity of the cutting operation. In some prior art cutting tools a single cutting action produces a single small piece of swarf with the possibility of the swarf jamming the cutting blades due to it not being ejected cleanly which also results in the pieces of swarf that follow fouling up. This means that time is spent unblocking the fouled swarf.
A further problem encountered with many prior art three bladed cutting tools is that they are unable to cut across corrugated sheet material. The reason for this is that their handles will interfere with the corrugations on the upside cutting direction.